Soul
by lyrainthedark
Summary: At the edge of the shadow, two souls stand reaching out as they have done since the beginning of time – warriors, in love. A saga of drabbles spanning the breadth of time and human feeling. NEW: French Translation in Progress, by Nami-la-folle. Nouveau: Traduction Francais En Cours, par Nami-la-folle.  COMPLETE.
1. Prologue

**Soul**

Prologue

_Wanderers In The Outer Darkness_

The Sengoku Jidai was not named for nothing. For a hundred years, clans and families lived out their lives on the edges of their swords – men, women, children. The names of great legends were born in those days, and died in those days...but like all things, they could not last forever.

The wars ended as they began; suddenly, without warning, with blood and glory and silence and heroism and death and love and silence and pain and silence and...in the end...silence. Quiet. Falling over the battlefields, falling over the warriors, falling over dead and living souls alike. Falling over the world.

At the edge of the shadow, two souls stood reaching out as they had done since the beginning of time – warriors, in love.

_I wanted it...to be different this time. I wanted – to know before the end! I wanted -_

The younger - brighter, softer, sadder, reaches one spear forward. A flare leaps outward with a pulse like a beating heart.

_I know. But there's always next time – always. **Next time.**_

The older - darker, grimmer, still more hopeful, sends the lightning light of the Dragon's Claws out to touch that reaching spear.

And then darkness; night, overwhelming but not eternal.


	2. Chapter 1

**Soul**

Chapter One

_Restoration: Time_

It is 1873 and the world is changing, changing into a thing that past and present will both deny and shy away from when it comes. It is Japan, opening its eyes to a wider view; it is emperors and kings drawing their last breaths of dominance in a world bound for democracy – democracy, which has cast its reigns and chains over every nation from west to east, crossing the boundaries of its old homeland and reaching for the rising sun.

It is 1873, and new laws are in place that will draw out the best and brightest and bring them into the folds of Industry and Army, of War and Power and Right. It has been years since Japan reached out its hand to the world; it will be years more, but the buildup is a promise that the young men reach for with naïve and greedy hands. For some of them, the spirits of their ancestors cry out, weeping as the peaceful world for which they paid in blood is broken -

For some of them, the crying is the sound of their own soul.

Date Masamune, conscript in the Imperial Army, soldier in training – he is one of those men.

Sanada Yukimura, a son of Saigo, last of the Samurai, is another.


	3. Chapter 2

**Soul**

Chapter Two

_Restoration: Choice_

For Masamune, weapons training is like a dream; when he lays hands on the swords, they are so smooth and weightless in his hands that he surprises his instructor and every other man in his unit, who expect the half-blind man to be an instant failure – not instant success.

The Army is being well trained; they will use the new, western weapons in combat; they will fire rifles and blind their breath with gunpowder odors and the sharp _crack _of bullets – they will carry artillery, iron and steel blasted outward on a gout of flame and smoke

But they will also carry the weapons of their houses and families, the weapons of their history and training, because man to man they cannot give the samurai an advantage. It does not feel wrong to him, fighting the samurai - though he is named for one, though his heart beats as one; it does not feel wrong to him.

Because he cannot _be_ one of them, does not have the bloodline or the inheritance, or even the calm, firm dedication to _bushido_. His code is battle; his honor is his blade. He fights for peace aware of the inconsistency, aware of the price that must be paid -

But he refuses to dwell on it. He has not yet killed a man, but he has joined the army, and even if he had not chosen this life, the conscription would have done it for him.. He knows what he has signed up to do:

Spill blood, seek glory.

Honor; heroism; death.


	4. Chapter 3

**Soul**

Chapter Three

_Restoration: Recognize_

Yukimura is a son of Saigo, last of the samurai. He is only seventeen, too cocky, too sure of himself by half – it is the luck of the gods that he is skilled enough to pull it off and survive, that he has made it through his life this far, through fourteen long years of training.

The samurai are standing at the edge of a cliff, an endless abyss below them; the abyss of the future. Yukimura can see the long darkness coming for him, coming for their whole family.

_We are truly the last of our kind. And our time...is almost over._

It is the end of an age.

It is the beginning of a whole new world.

All he wants, knowing this, is to be most perfectly that which he knows he is - samurai, warrior, leader – a filial son, a loyal follower. He wants more than anything to give that complete and perfect loyalty to his father which is the ultimate expression of a samurai's _bushido_; he wants to give his life for his lord.

But somehow, even now, at the edge of this changing world – somehow, something is holding him back. There is a voice inside him that questions his fathers decision, the tenacity with which he holds on to dying ways of war. There is something _missing _in his lord, and Yukimura does not know what it is...but it torments him.

It is that torment which has driven him to train, to fight, to seek lasting glory beyond the sunset that is a mortal life.

It has made him a warrior without compare, but that drive is failing him now, pushing him into dark thoughts.

Where could he find an opponent worthy of his prowess?

Where find a man like himself -

A man with the dark-beating heart of a battling beast?


	5. Chapter 4

**Soul**

Chapter Four

_Restoration: Meet_

He goes alone into the shadows of the city, wandering without a real purpose, dragged on by fate or destiny, dragged on into trouble. Yukimura is _asking_ for trouble, and he knows it – these are dangerous times to be a man such as he is, walking alone in these places; if he was not so young, he would probably be arrested already.

He has gone without his father's permission or knowledge, gone seeking something to fill the empty space in his heart, and when he finally finds something to interest him he follows it with a sudden, inexplicable delight – what the arrow feels, springing from the bow.

What he has found, what draws him, is the sound of clashing steel, the sounds of masculine effort, the sound of battle and a shout that is half laughter. He follows the noise to the top of a small hill, and looks down into a fenced compound where the newly conscripted Imperial Army is training.

He does not hear his own gasp of – _something_.

All he knows is that he has found – _something_.

Below him a man wielding two swords with the rash confidence of youth moves through half a hundred men like a whirlwind. It is the laughter of this man that has drawn Yukimura here, his fighting spirit alight with crackling vengeance.

Yukimura feels his heartbeat flutter and thicken; feels the moment spread out like drops of water caught slow-motion in mid-air. He sees the man turning, his form perfect, his speed incredible, his accuracy impeccable. One blue-gray eye gleams darkly in the evening shadows; the other is covered with a dark leather patch.

Black hair swings sharply back in the next instant, hiding the patch from view.

The smile remains.

The fire that is Yukimura's battle fury rushes through his veins, and with it a sharper, more poignant lust.

For a moment, his gaze meets the gaze of the man standing below him; fire and lightning crash against each other in joyful waves, spinning invisible in the purple night.

With his inner vision, Yukimura sees a one-eyed dragon raging against the sky.

A/N: Minor edits in tense and meaning; forward to further fun!

Please Review!


	6. Chapter 5

**Soul**

Chapter Five

_Restoration: Challenge_

_Who are you? _

"Hey, up there – you here for a fight, samurai?"

_Where did you come from?_

"Hey! I'm talking to you! I'm not just here for show, _**you see**_?"

Yukimura stares down over the top of the fence, hears the words and lets them flow past. The questions shoot through him like quick shots of hot sake, and his heart is beating a thousand miles a minute in his chest.

He _does not know_ this man. _Cannot_, for it is rarely that he wanders away from his father's estate and into the city – rarely, and he knows, somehow, that if he had met this man before he would never, never have forgotten him.

_He does not know this man._

But Yukimura remembers him – his smile, his one-eyed glare, the sharp edges of his words, the rolling thunder that is his voice beneath them.

Remembers him, the oddball sound of English words tossed casually into Japanese phrases; remembers him, the wailing sound of swords of death...

Remembers him.

_Dokuganryu. _

The word, the name, flutters across his thoughts as light and cool as a summer butterfly. He shouts it out – a challenge, an acceptance.

"Dokuganryu!"

And from below him, rich and smooth as cream, comes laughter in answer.

"So? That's right, samurai, I'm the One-Eyed Dragon - no!"

The last word goes to the others standing around Masamune, the Imperial Soldiers eager to test their training against one of the samurai.

"This one is all for me!"

But when he looks up again, the samurai with the challenging voice, the samurai whose aura whips in the wind like a rising flame – this samurai, who Masamune remembers, though he has never met him before -

The samurai is gone.

A feeling of _red_ washes over him – red emotion, red blood, red memory. Anger fills him, and Masamune lets out a shout, raging because suddenly he feels...abandoned. And how does that make sense? The feeling passes quickly, and leaves behind a pulsing expectation.

Every day until it happens, he will be waiting to meet that samurai again.

Yukimura runs, runs back to his father's estate, his hands clenched tight into fists at his sides.

He does not know who that man is – _Dokuganryu_. He does not know, but the name belongs and he recognizes _something _in that stare.

Suddenly the fight for existence that has been looming over him his whole life is the most welcome thing in the world. His father has been foolish, to think that one clan of samurai can stand against the world...but that no longer matters.

He has found his foe, his enemy, his heartbeat; he has found his reason to go on.

The loyalty he has been seeking his whole life solidifies, and he feels in perfect balance – demon and desire.

_I want to face...that man._

A/N: Something about the perspective of this seems skewed...but I still like, so it's done for now!

Please Review


	7. Chapter 6

**Soul**

Chapter Six

_Restoration: And So It Ends_

Four years pass like smoke, dull and stinging and quick. When the fighting begins, it is no surprise to anyone but the few who have spent their days and nights in denial; they are clinging to their own power, their own past – to ancestors long gone, to victories diminished in memory and meaning.

It is 1877, and Japan and her samurai are clawing at the pleasantries that hold them apart from war. The days of honor and glory are dying; a way must be cleared for western thought and western weapons and the threat of the western world at war.

The eyes of those in power are on the rich lands of the continent that have always taunted the Land of the Rising Sun with their resources and their wide open spaces. The eyes of Masamune are on the glory and the conquest. The eyes of Yukimura are on the road he walks into darkness. What it means, for both of them, is that their eyes are on each other.

It has been four years of waiting for both of them, four years of inner silence and four years of dreams. Their eyes are locked on each other from the moment the battle opens – Yukimura is drawn across the battlefield as if on a tether, following the smell of thunder, the crackle of the presence he has been longing for – his whole life, it seems.

Masamune sees him coming and smiles and doesn't know it; in front of him and behind him and on all sides of him are his enemies – but the presence of _red_ is with him again and that is all that matters. None of these foes are anything like _that_ one; they have yet to face each other, have yet to look into each others eyes – they are far away and they have never crossed swords...

All that changes in a moment. Yukimura leaps from an elevation in the landscape and tumbles half of a dozen of his father's men, stands tall and grinning in front of Masamune.

"Dokuganryu!"

Masamune is suddenly aching; it is the sound of _that_ _voice_ – why?

"_**Red**_**.**"

Yukimura's smile shivers, falters, tightens.

They are moving in the next moment, together, and the flash and whine of steel is a loving murmur, a well-known theme for this madness between them. With every heartbeat that passes they seek each other's death, and the bloodlust does not falter even as another lust grows up to saturate the space between them.

_Thrust_, and steel slides along the shaft of the spear, and back-to-back and then chest-to-back they are pressed together.

_Twist_, and an empty hand seeking the hilt of a sword finds skin instead, following the lick of flame that is the head of Yukimura's spear, and the shiver of coolness that is blood on the skin.

_Parry_, and they are leaning forward, breathing the sweat and the breath of each other's presence, pressing with all the strength of a generation's wait.

And then there is a crack, because the wood of the spear is not as strong as its master's will. Yukimura flies backward with just enough presence of mind to lash out to the left so that he is not the only one disarmed.

They rush forward, weaponless, grappling at each other through the armor. Hands pull in pain, but it is almost pleasure and they are thinking in unison a thought that makes no logical sense.

_Just to feel you near me again -_

And by accident, pressing too hard, moving just too far -

_A kiss_.

A kiss. At first it is nothing but fury, all the fury of their battle, and Yukimura tastes blood without knowing whose lip he has bitten, hopes it belongs to _Dokuganryu. _His tongue darts out to sweep it away, and instead he finds Masamune, heat and brilliance – waiting, just waiting.

Yukimura is on him in the next moment, and this time there is no accident, only purpose – the soft mouth that opens to his tongue, the callused hands he can feel reaching up to touch his cheek. The first kiss lasted a moment; the second kiss lasts forever, but that is a moment too.

It cannot be anything else; there is still a battle raging around them, still a war to be fought. In those two moments desire speaks and has its answer – but everything else, _anything_ else, must wait.

It is Yukimura who reaches his spear first, and turns; Yukimura, who moves with the reflexes and skill of a lifetime of samurai training, and buries the head of his one unbroken spear in the smooth, pale throat that his lips brushed once, so briefly.

Masamune's body dies, but his spirit is inflamed and he is the rush that moves the Imperial Soldiers, pressing them forward until the battle becomes a rout.

The scent of lightning lingers; Yukimura smiles as he kills.

When the battle is lost, he flees at the side of his lord and does not look back. Soon, he will take two more lives.

His father's.

His own.

Neither death will pierce him like the moment he slew the One-Eyed Dragon; the moment he sent his beating heart back to the _silence between_ to wait.

A/N: Phew! Almost 900 words...dedicated to Naq and Kay, for reviews, whipcracking, and general helpful awesomeness :D I 3 you guys :D

Please Review!


	8. Chapter 7

**Soul**

Chapter Seven

_Wanderers In The Outer Darkness: II_

In heaven as on earth, there is distance between them, and recognition; in heaven, as on earth, there is an internal mingling of passion and pain. Masamune has been waiting, reliving the same kiss without the keen tingle of flesh to bear the memory, tormented in the eternity of waiting that is a very few days on earth.

When Yukimura comes to him, they reach for each other as they have been reaching through all of time - but the distance that was not breached in life could not be breached in death.

"_I thought this time – we were so close!_"

There is an angry fire burning in Yukimura's eyes, a fire that turns his gaze to a crimson flare. Masamune feels it, the rage, the fury, but he does not understand it is for him.

"_It was better this time – that kiss...I will remember it. Next time..."_

The fire snaps and rages and reaches out and out – but it cannot reach Masamune any more than Yukimura himself can.

"_Next time I don't want to kill you! Next time I don't want to taste you and your death in the same minute -"_

"_But you're such a kind killer, __**Red**__."_

Yukimura softens despite himself, hearing the affection so raw and open in that voice.

"_Dokuganryu_," he says.

And Masamune senses his advantage, presses it, sends love streaming out into darkness.

"_I remember, __**you see**__? You knew me – and I knew you. And I'll know you next time, __**Red**__. I will not forget that kiss."_

Yukimura feels the tug of the void, the swelling, liquid presence of light that precipitates birth and washes away the past.

"_And I will not forget either – I will not forget -_"

* * *

><p>AN: In between again...next, we venture onward to a further time and further life! To Naq, and the Challenge of a 100 fics!

Please Review!


	9. Chapter 8

**Soul**

Chapter Eight

_The Western Edge: Time_

It is 1914, and the world is at war, a war that has been coming since the gun smoke cleared away from central Europe at the end of the last century. Out of the divided West comes an artless silence following on generations of interference and display, and across China and the stranded islands of Micronesia a new wave of tension is rising.

Cold thoughts penetrate the Land of the Rising Sun. Greedy hands and thoughts reach out as they always do, seeking new lands, new resources, new wealth and new objects of envy. Japan has made her choice, and the choice is violence, new weapons, the second great adventure of the Imperial Army.

It is 1914, and that Army has crossed the sea to the west. There are many generals, many captains, many lieutenants, but only one is prepared for the fight that waits across the water.

Only one has been waiting for this day since the moment he was born – and before.

Only one is Date Masamune.

In China, there are not many who resist, not many who are prepared; the land is groaning from a century of oppression, a century of opium, a century of delusions and cultural conquest; China, ancient bastion of civilized man, is weary. She has put on the headdress of a ruling Empress for the last time, but there is still life in her; there is still fight.

The fight has many names – some made in victory, some in defeat.

Sanada Yukimura intends for his to shine brightest of them all.

A/N: A new life, and new chance...let's see what happens, shall we?

Please Review!


	10. Chapter 9

**Soul**

Chapter Nine

_The Western Edge: Choice_

Sanada Yukimura has a job to do.

Assassin, rebel, soldier, he stands tall and still and silent against a background of velvet night. He wears black because that is what the darkness requires of him, but there is red on the hilt of his dagger and red on the grip of his gun. There is red in his hair, a length of silk tied around his forehead and binding back his hair -

The red is dark as blood in the midnight quiet, and blood is what he has come seeking.

For six days, an army has been amassing on the eastern shore of his great nation, not five mile away from his village. The army is of his mother's people, and though she has asked him to stay away from the resistance that is forming, though she has asked him to wait, to remember that some of these people are his kin...

She is a woman, and his mother, and Japanese.

She does not understand.

She does not understand that part of Yukimura has been waiting for battle to break out since the day he was born.

It is the part of him that told him which weapons to choose, when the armaments of the resistance were laid out in front of him.

It is the part of him that dreams in blue and lightning.

The part of him that remembers a solitary kiss.

* * *

><p>AN:Yuki first this time...onward to Masamune!

Please Review!


	11. Chapter 10

**Soul**

Chapter Ten

_The Western Edge: Recognize_

Date Masamune is Sanada Yukimura's job, though he doesn't know it.

He is general of the advancing army, in charge of the growing mass of troops and weapons, artillery and supplies, that has been sent from Japan to take Chinese land out of German hands. While the West is distracted with its own work of conquest, the stolen provinces of the East are easy prey – or so _he_ thinks, and all those who sent him.

He is young, but the army has been his whole life; he trained under his father, and ignored the tears of his mother, and when the day came that he was old enough he was far more than ready. The reputation of his family and his nation are twin weights on his shoulders, but not heavy enough to calm his reckless nature.

He carries his own rifle, bayonet ready; at his side are pistol and sword both. The patch that covers his lost right eye is bright and brilliant blue.

His pistol belonged to his father before him; the sword is inscribed with words that are his alone.

He is a dangerous man, a sharpened weapon aimed outward at the world from the cool, dense mists that populate Fuji. Without him, the Japanese offensive will falter; without him, there might be time for languishing German troops and Chinese fighters to gather their forces and defend their cherished land.

He knows all of this, but he will still fight with his own weapons in his own hands.

In his mind and in his heart an echo has been screaming since his first memory – an echo, a promise. It is a red-beating drum, a sharp and throbbing hurt, his sacred moment.

It is his dreams, wrapped in red and fire.

It is a kiss that he remembers, as he remembers a promise not to forget -

He will know, when he meets the one he made that promise to; he will know, and no border, no boundary, no impossibility will keep him away.

He wants more than kiss to hold onto.

A promise is not enough.

* * *

><p>AN: Hopefully Masamune doesn't disappoint...and hopefully this chapter appears, as ff . net has been eating my chapters alive lately...

Please Review


	12. Chapter 11

**Soul**

Chapter Eleven

_The Western Edge: Meet_

The night seems long and shuttered, the passing of the hours dulled to a shallow ebbing that is still and quiet as a midnight tide. Yukimura comes from the west, sticks to the shadows and draws himself like oil from one to the next. His heartbeat is high and pounding in his chest as he makes his way through makeshift fencing and up to the edge of the hastily constructed building that serves as a barracks for invading troops.

Behind the barracks is an officers tent, a canvas pavilion whose entrance flutters in the breeze, beckoning, summoning.

He hears a voice slide warm and rough into the night, edged with humor, edged with lust.

Suddenly there is more than adrenaline moving Yukimura, more than the the pressure of his assignment; his pupils dilate in the night, reaching, seeking, his whole being on fire, leaping towards the source of that voice.

One haunted recollection drifts up in his mind, thick and sharp and clear.

His lips burn with memory; like every other time that he does not quite remember, he has never heard it before - but he _knows that voice_. Joy sings in him, forgetting the price of his purpose; the intent of his presence; the murder that stands behind him like a shadow, waiting.

As far as he is concerned, it can wait forever.

This time he will have more than a kiss, more than a memory.

_This time?_

This timehe will take exactly what he wants.

_This time._

* * *

><p>Masamune is waiting, as he waits most nights – for a companion, a courtesan, the evening's selected entertainment. It is a perk of his position, a vanity he enjoys.<p>

His vice is brown eyes and red fire, youth soft and dark and tense. His vice is skin in shades of almond and shadow, the lean lines of muscle in chest and abdomen, the sharp and perfect curve of a hip bone, taunting.

The tauting is equal parts memory and desire; the desire often quenched, the memory never. Masamune dreams of love blooming out of lover, of a night that will open for him like the petals of a sacred flower. That it is _tonight_, that heaven might just drop truth in his lap – it doesn't even occur to him.

When the flap of his tent is pushed open and he sees Yukimura, for a moment there is nothing but the pounding in his chest, the static bolt of his heartbeat loud in his ears.

He licks dry lips, and sees a faint, pink blush dusting the cheekbones of the man in front of him, Yukimura's eyes limning the smooth flow of his body – jaw, throat, collarbone, chest – just barely visible through the loose overlap of his haori.

"_**Red**_."

His voice is soft and beckoning and full; he smiles. With something like a strangled gasp, Yukimura shatters his own stillness, sudden, yearning, tender.

"_Dokuganryu_."

In the next moment their world is reduced to hands groping in darkness, black silk and red silk and blue silk and madness. The word that slips out of them is brilliant in its unity – a sigh, a groan.

"_You_."

In that instant, there is nothing between them.

It lasts forever.

_Not long enough._


	13. Chapter 12

**Soul**

Chapter Twelve

_The Western Edge: Challenge_

In the night, Sanada Yukimura and Date Masamune are no longer enemies, no longer fighters, no longer soldiers, no longer men.

They are one being of sweating bodies and desire, one creature of lusts and soothing lusts and gasps and moans – one light, one life. It is only a moment and only the night, but it lasts as long as the feeling of fingers digging into hips, as long as the glare of one sea-gray eye into a blazing, passionate pair of murky umber – as long as the grip of pleasure is on them, hands and tongue and cock and deep, deep union.

When Yukimura is naked under him, exposed in every way – when he is turning, reaching, mouth open, cock sliding on cock, seeking any kind of friction – it is then, in that moment, that Masamune sees the beginning of the end.

A mark, black and curved and damning; a traitorous symbol, a darkness, a demon painted in permanent, staring starkness. A tattoo, so small, so innocent. Seven strokes imprinted on the muscled flesh of Yukimura's thigh, seven strokes that flay Masamune's heart with their meaning even as he presses his lips to the soft spot behind the knee.

_Resistance._

_Assassin._

_You..._

"You..."

After that, a sound of pleasure, a sound of pain, Masamune is silent, his sounds all turned inward, even when his mouth opens in a soft 'O' of pleasure at some unexpected contact. He is waiting for betrayal now, but he cannot deny any of this – not his want, not his need, not the space in his heart that has been soothed so suddenly.

Yukimura moans and presses every inch of his skin upwards, and some of the moans are because of the things Masamune's hands begin to do, and some of them come from the sensation of smooth, pale flesh under his fingers, the strong arms that mark the new boundaries of his world –

It was not battle he was waiting for, it was not trust; it was not the spear that was familiar in his hand, but the rival he faced with it; it was not rebellion that he craved but this, this, this...

This.

_This._

Hot flesh infuses cold atmosphere, makes darkness into a stimulating tendency, opens up new lines of thought and desire, simulates expert movements where awkwardness has faded into instinct.

Masamune's tongue is hot, electric, rough, and so, so _good_ – the line it follows, nipple, bellybutton, cock...it is all teasing, wet and wonderful, ripples of sensation that tighten the muscles of Yukimura's thighs and arc his spine.

Intent, an eager student, Yukimura wants to do everything Masamune has done – wants touch, wants taste, wants eager promise. Masamune is patient, teaches – lips and tongue and fingers and slow sensation building to a moment of union, utter oneness, deep penetration. Yukimura closes his eyes and gasps and can only breathe, breathe, breathe, as the breathless voice beside his ear demands.

It is long hours later, the balance of the night long past, when Yukimura slips into sleep with a smile on his lips, and a decision.

Enough of war and the gods of war and the price of honor; that is only pain. He will stay right here, open his soul to its lost-and-found companion every night – he will forge a perfect loyalty for the only one he has found who is truly worthy.

The one he recognizes; the one he needs.

_Dokuganryu._

Masamune lays awake and looks at the man cradled in his arm, and thinks of the morning and what it is that he must do. They will be soldiers again; men of purpose, again – men to kill for life and fight for death and win the future of the world for the dream of their own nation.

He closes his eye and prays that while he is sleeping, he will forget.

"_**Red**_..."


	14. Chapter 13

**Soul**

Chapter Thirteen

_The Western Edge: And So It Ends_

The night passes swiftly, too swiftly, the dull black hours racing each other across the land.

Masamune is the first one to wake, the first one to open his eye to the touch of the morning and feel the warm, hard body curved against his chest, _yin_ to his _yang_.

The night that had passed them by in pleasures was still lingering, the purple twilight of dawn only a shimmer, a faintness of light that came through the slender triangle of the tent's opening. In the scattered silks and silence around them Masamune saw a scene that had happened many times written longhand for his own pleasant perusal.

He relived the darkness in memory, the caress of hands far softer than any warrior's hands had a right to be, the groans and the feeling and the unity that had awoken his soul and sent it fleeing through his flesh like a looming, liquid fire.

He knew suddenly, fully, completely, that the man in his arms was the man he had been waiting for; that he would never be tormented by the memory of a kiss again.

It was then, as he turned, bending over Yukimura's sleep-parted lips, that the truth returned, all of it in one fell swoop.

_This is the man I love._

_The man I remember._

_The man I have been waiting for._

Yukimura turned.

The sheets twisted about his calves and left the rest of his body exposed. Appreciatively, Masamune's eye followed the curve of spine revealed to his eyes, the strong, muscled shoulders, the taut, lean buttocks -

And then the knowledge of identity and consequences that had been branded into his thoughts and then forgotten by force of will returned to him. As sharp and hard and undeniable as it had been the night before, reality assailed him.

_Resistance, tattooed on the back of his thigh._

_Assassin – mercenary – rebel – murderer. _

_This is the man I love, and he is here to kill me._

His heart broke freshly across the pattern that had been prepared by his first glimpse of that dark, inked mark. The promise of secret violence stood out in Masamune's thoughts and filled his heart to the brim with betrayal.

If _he_ remembered, could the one beside him do anything else?

_We were meant for this moment!_

If he had been waiting – why _would_ he be, unless it was _for _something?

_How could you?_

Was one night of lust all that was granted to him of heaven?

_How could you!_

His eye accused the sleeper silently, dark and full with pain. The agony that rose up in him was confusion and panic and fear, betrayal twisted into a rope of _why _and _why _and _why again_.

Again, because there was still the memory that had come before – memory that he would never understand, memory that he had lived to believe.

He had lived through battle and torture and terror and agony and loss.

_None _of it had prepared him for the moment that was..._this_.

_This_, which partook of those things, and yet was none of them, worse than all of them.

_This_, which washed away all words, all thoughts, but one.

_Death. _

Death, because he could not, _could not live without this man._

This man, whose name he had yet to learn.

This man, whose very existence would destroy or break him.

Beneath his pillow, Masamune's fingers found the short, sharp blade he kept there for emergencies. He barely hesitated for a moment – and such had been his trust for Masamune that Yukimura woke only as the knife slipped expertly between his ribs. He heard Masamune's voice come from a distance, a woolly buzz of sound.

"I couldn't let you kill me – I couldn't – no matter how much I love you -"

Two bubbling breaths sighed past Yukimura's lips, and with them words as sharp and clear as stars in a moonless night.

"Wasn't...going to. Aren't I more...important to you, aren't I? You are – _you are -_"

His eyes kindled like garnets in the dim morning dusk.

"But you always...want...your own way..."

And then quiet - sudden, endless, full.

Three harsh breaths were all Masamune could hold.

He heard a wail begin, somewhere deep in his soul -

And then the pain in his belly, dull though the blade was sharp; the pain winding around him, comforting, a caress as red and hot as fire.

Blood filled his cupped, stained hands, overflowed like an offering.

The blood and the pain.

_Red, and gorgeous._

"_**Red.**_"

* * *

><p>AN: The most tragic bit so far, I think; the price of misunderstanding and the fear of loss. Next, a bit of time _between_, as Yukimura reacts and Masamune begins to realize the pain he has caused - the price of tragedy. Dedicated to Naq for ceaseless sessions hashing out character trauma, and endless inspiration and cheerleading! More soon; be awesome, and:

Please Review!


	15. Chapter 14

**Soul**

Chapter Fourteen

_Wanderers In The Outer Darkness: III_

_Alone now, Yukimura remembers the taste of pain as blood and dust; remembers the wound that ripped away his life, his happiness, his dreams – a wound of the body and a wound of the soul. Over and over, they have lived one way – meet, and fight, and die – but never like this, **never **like this. _

_Never a knife in the night unknown, never a soft betrayal._

_He remembers the silence, and he remembers time after time after time, flaking away like rust._

_In the dim, quiet place between one life and the next, between eternity and tomorrow, Yukimura waits – and though it is not long, it is forever, and though he is full of love, it is the agony that is the first thing that reaches past his lips when Masamune is before him, reaching, greedy for solace that Yukimura denies him and sensation that this nowhere is not meant to give._

"_Do you know what I would do to be free of you? Do you know what I would **pay**?"_

_Masamune is stunned, reeling, desperate, despairing. _

"_My whole existence, the many lives of my being – I gave them to you. Many hearts, many bodies, years and years and years – why are you so stupid! Why are you so proud? What kind of idiot murders his lover – what kind of fool...?"_

_Frustration tightened Yukimura's voice; rage and pain at the broken promise he had allowed himself to believe in for one mortal night washed outward in flames like a dying star._

"_I love you – I hate you! And I love you."_

_Masamune stood firm in the buffeting waves of power, and tears streamed down from his one good eye. _

_Even that was proof, part of the promise._

_They were meant to be together._

_He could only **be** the way that Yukimura remembered him; anything else was a travesty, mere misdirection.  
><em>

"_I knew – I knew the moment I did it - I knew it was a mistake. I'm so sorry, **Red**."_

_The question comes, as he knows it must._

"_Tell me why – tell my why you sold our everything for blood!"_

_Lightning arcs out and trembles in the darkness, flashes and folds into a blue caress._

"_You bore the mark of my enemy. You were an assassin - you belonged to the **cause**."_

_And Yukimura knows that he is the one who betrayed, the one who sold his soul, the one who made the worse mistake in silence, the one who opened up the tragedy and left a dark, smooth path for Death to follow._

_For the first time in forever, he leaps the void between them and nothing holds him back._

_For the first time in forever, soul meets soul and entwines in a kiss beyond anything flesh can dream of or achieve._

_It is so much that to want more seems like nothing but greed – but they **are** greedy, and they know it, and they are not ashamed._

"_I'm sorry. If I had spoken to you-"_

"_I'm sorry too. If I had woken you -"_

_Masamune holds out his arms._

_Yukimura embraces all of him._

"_Come on, **Red**. **Let's party**. Let's try one, last time..."_

* * *

><p><em><em>A/N: So, onward once more - or shall I say "Once more unto the breach, dear friends..."?

Please Review!


	16. Chapter 15

**Soul**

Chapter Fifteen

_The Long Night: Time_

It is 1937, and war has raised its head in the furthest East, uncoiling like a dragon of smoke and terror, poised with glistening fangs gaping over the plundered cities of China's eastern provinces.

Beijing.

Tianjin.

Shanghai.

_Nanking._

It is 1937 and Nanking has swollen, pregnant with refugees, one million men and women and children dragging their souls through the streets; Nanking, city standing at the edge of a terrible precipice, Nanking, from which a wail is already rising, winding through the winter air.

It is 1937, and Nanking, one hundred generations of beauty and tradition, is going up in flames.

The generals of the Japanese army, their lieutenants and officers, the legions of men led coldly, quietly along a lane of shallow shadow – they watch, breath steaming, as bodies barricade the Yangtze and pile up in the city streets, as men die and women scream the loss of their lives and treasured virtue, as the vicious cycle of violence continues, adding to what has become an age of agony.

A man stands alone, separate from all the others, holding himself apart, stoic, steady, staring. His face shows nothing of his thoughts, nothing of his soul.

He came to lead a conquering army, following the silence in the back of his thoughts and half-remembered dreams, following the sensation, the prodding of his subconscious: _something is missing._

It will be years before he learns what that something is - what the whisper of retribution, emotion, silence, means.

For now, he is trapped in the terror of the times. For now, he can only watch as his soldiers cease to be men – as they become beasts armed in steal, beasts with hungers congealed out of darkness in the screaming night.

He closes his eyes to the torment and to the tragedy, turns his back and walks away.

It is a sight that strikes a chord in him; a chord of memory.

The sounds and the scents of war - he knows them.

_Why? _

He cannot remember why he cannot remember; he tastes the trauma building at the tip of his tongue.

His name is Sanada Yukimura.

This moment will shape his life.

* * *

><p>AN: And onward we go once more...

Please Review!


	17. Chapter 16

**Soul**

Chapter Sixteen

_The Long Night: Choice_

In the East, war has been raging for the better part of three generations.

In the West, the failure of economy and Wall Street's empire have obliterated all but the memory of the Great War. There are no wounded cities to heal, no bombarded earth to stand as witness to the violence that passed over the world. The only scars are born by men, and men are quick to forget, quick to die, though they are slow, slow, slow to heal.

They are not quick to look up when the weight of Depression lays like iron across their backs, when the jobless many and the wealthy few alike stare dark-eyed with fear into a darker future.

One man stands apart from the common standard; one man grows up on stories of the desperate, man-to-man moments that solidify war. He hears the _crack _of a rifle in the name of the gun, knows the best way to equip a bayonet by instinct, knows the feeling of swords in his hands, of one and two and four and six. He knows the odors of carnage and the slickness that is hands sheathed in gore.

He knows, because he dreams in black and blood, dreams in pain and panic, dreams of flesh, of fury, and then again of blood. He has never spoken a word to anyone of the lives that lurk inside him, of the long, drawn-out history of his soul. He has never spoken of the love that lingers in his bones, of the tempest that wakes in him when dawn steals the lingering light of memory from his mind, steals the smile that he is searching for even now, steals the heat of soft lips and the press of a hard and wanton body.

He waits for war; he can feel in his bones that it is coming.

He wouldn't be here, otherwise; he wouldn't be waiting.

And then it is 1941, and the war of the world becomes the war of the United States. He is on the first ship, in the first troop; he goes seeking the land that is the homeland of both halves of his soul; the one he carries, and the one he is going now to find.

_This is how we come together; this is how we find each other, time after time._

He is Date Masamune, and he wants to hear _that voice_ speaking out to him, wants to feel _those lips_ as they speak his name again his skin.

_Dokuganryu_.

He hears, _feels_ it in memory.

"_**Red**_."

It rolls off his tongue, hot and sweet and suffering.

* * *

><p>AN: Masamune, infected with memory...and with a different experience entirely from the one that's taken over Yukimura. Onward once again...

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	18. Chapter 17

**Soul**

Chapter Seventeen

_The Long Night: Recognize_

It does not take long – hours, only – for Masamune to realize that nothing in memory has prepared him for this battle, this fight. The enemy is out of sight, and the sound and smell of guns firing is a blinding blare across his senses, interrupted here and there by a splash of crimson or a drawn out groan. Death is not pretty and death is not quick and they are dying, dying all around him -

His friends, his comrades, his compatriots. They are giving up their lives in all the terrible ways that human enmity can devise, and though he has seen a thousand horrors, a thousand traumas, a thousand world-ending conflicts in his dreams -

It pales before the world that has plastered itself across his living vision.

He does not know why he expected something cleaner, something softer out of this new world at war, does not know why he expected a difference. Like the presence that lurks in the center of his heart, blood has always been, will always be red.

It is a wide stain across the Pacific, and it follows him – from one island to the next, from bitter victory to bitter defeat and back again. He becomes one of the _old boys _quickly, as the age of his comrades seems to drop with the passing months – 24, 21, 17-it's-a-secret. He waits, looking at all the new faces with a strange depth of disregard, ignoring them all when he sees that they are not the one he's waiting for. They are too likely to die, too young to listen, too painful to lose when they become his friends.

As much as he looks, he does not expect to find the one wants; these men are all on his side, after all.

_And what would be the fun in that, eh **Red**?_

He imagines the scowl that he knows would belong to his rival, imagines the flip of long hair over a shoulder as he turns away, irritated.

When he is fighting, Masamune watches faces more closely still – he listens, with all of his soul, for a sound that he can recognize – a word – a laugh – a battle cry. It does not come in the scattered warfare of aircraft carriers and battleships that begins his tour of duty; he senses no one special in his trek across the jungled-or-rocky islands that dot the sea guarding the main body of the Japanese archipelago.

When he finally encounters the face he has been waiting for, when he finally feels the rush of lightning life that can only mean one thing, the world fades away around him. He stands still, and stares, but it is a wrong moment in which to be distracted.

He feels the bullet clip his shoulder, a sharp, sting – he feels another sink deep into thigh with shattering force.

There is pain, but the pleasure is greater as long as his eyes stay focused across the battlefield – on the leader of the enemy forces, on the answer to all his questions...

On Sanada Yukimura.

Eventually, the cracking, spattering sound of gunfire dies away, and with it a portion of hope; there is no victorious shout, no lowering of nursing personnel, no sound at all. The face he has been focused on fades out of his vision and into blackness – and then, sharply, returns with a jostling of pain.

He hears a rapid staccato of language, a familiar voice speaking words he can understand but not understand.

"This one is still alive – take him below and secure him for questioning."

Blinking against a leaden pressure, Masamune opens his eyes and stares upward into an uncompromising stare that he knows all too well.

His voice emerges as a thin croak, but the language is recognizable Japanese and he sees surprise on the faces within his field of vision.

"So, we're back at it again, huh, _**Red**_?"

The eyes staring down at him flickered with umber and ruby, shades of brown and blood.

But empty.

_Empty_.

In terror and horror the likes of which he had known in no life, Masamune felt himself falling into a dark well of anguish.

_Empty_.

He had found _**Red**_, but there was no recognition there.

A/N: And, for the first time...true peril. What is the source of this suffering? Can it be undone? Will it wait to another life – is there another life to wait for? Read on, seekers, and know. Bwaha. Portentous much?

Please Review!


	19. Chapter 18

**Soul**

Chapter Eighteen

_The Long Night: Meet_

Though he says nothing, though his full of _nothing_, though there is not a spark or ripple of feeling in him for this man, this half-dead American man with the audacity to give his captor a nickname...

Though there is nothing, Yukimura _knows_ _something_ – and he does not like it, does not like the sensation that something is missing, the feeling that the darkness inside him is more than a darkness, that it is a shadow cast across the whole of his life.

Meaning is missing; purpose has vanished into the oncoming night, purple and tender as a bruise.

_Tender._

His eyes slide up and slightly to the left, slipping in silence long the curve of a cheekbone, a jaq - the word surprises him as it comes to him, the emphasis in it, the strangeness of a sudden vision that binds him in a moment of _blue_ - but he shakes his head and continues walking behind his prisoner, this strange, one-eyed man whose vision darts over his skin like lightning.

Yukimura reminds himself he has a job to do – a deeper purpose, one that was made manifest on a much earlier day, a day when all the darkness of war had congealed and lay revealed before him.

_Remember Nanking. Remember the beast a man can become. Remember the dark abyss._

He tries his hardest to keep his inward focus, and he wins moments of freedom from that gaze, the lightning touch of it, the electric sparkle of attention-need-desire-want...

But they are few, those moments, and the further they go along this corridor, the more steps Yukimura takes with the man beside him on his stretcher, the more he cannot keep his gaze from turning sideways, staring, learning a face that is suddenly, perfectly familiar.

Not soon enough (too soon) they reach a room at the end of the hallway, empty except for a cot, a stool and a bucket. The group of soldiers dropped the stretcher roughly on the cot, and Yukimura winced internally, watching the eye of his prisoner go wide with sudden pain.

With short, snapped orders, Yukimura summoned a medic and sat himself on the stool to wait, watching as the man arrived and began to shake his head at the damage which had been done to his newest patient.

"Shoulder wound, shallow and clean...but this leg is going to take some work, Sanada-sama. The force of the bullet has broken the bone. This man should be thankful the break was clean, and that the bullet has not impacted directly on the bone."

An hour or so passed, in which Yukimura was thankful that his prisoner was unconscious; there was a great deal of blood, and a deal of uncomfortable _hmm_ingand _ahh_ing from the medic. Finally, the leg was wrapped in clean bandages and the medic departed, bowing shortly in Yukimura's direction.

Another hour passed, and then the man began to wake up, stirring feebly, in obvious pain. His eye opened slowly, and Yukimura felt the tingle of missing awareness begin again. He focused on the hidden eye, the one behind the patch, the one that did not confuse and control him.

"Name?"

He said it in English, sharply, in denial of those earlier moments.

The eye turns again and there is such pain in it, such sorrow, such grasping, defeated loss, that Yukimura is cowed by it.

He wonders at the answering pain inside himself; at the jarring of war breaking out in his soul; at the half of himself that wants nothing more than to comfort, to console, to wash that pain away forever.

"You really don't remember, do you, _**Red**_?"

Stiffly, looking away, refusing to hear, Yukimura repeats his question.

"_Name?"_

He is answered by a sigh; by self-deprecating laughter.

"Date Masamune. Date Masamune, that's my name. And..._Dokuganryu_. Which do you prefer, _**Red**_?"

But Yukimura cannot answer, because the sound of that word, that name – it has set him adrift in a sea of shards, memory and emotion with edges like glass.

_Dokuganryu. _

_**Dokuganryu.**_

He tests the sound of it, the taste.

"_Dokuganryu_."

It is bittersweet, and rich as chocolate.


	20. Chapter 19

**Soul**

Chapter Nineteen

_The Long Night: Challenge_

Masamune is not prepared for these moments, for their pain and their surprise, though he tells himself he should be.

He says _**Red**_ and what he expects is recognition, what he expects is the same wild happiness that convulsed him -

He does not expect silence, or confusion, or – nothing.

He is not prepared for the agony of being forgotten; was he not important enough, not good enough? Was he bad, terribly bad in a way he does not understand – is his life, his memory, a punishment?

_What a punishment._

Or maybe a fantasy. Maybe unreality. Maybe...insanity.

_A dream. A dream come to life – I must be mad._

But the dream continues to stare at him, orders treatment for his wounds – painful treatment, but when he wakes he can feel the difference, and though there is still an ache, it is a better ache. Not his heart, though. Not his heart, drawn out and plucked open and strained through time. That is roughness, jagged, sharp edges cutting anew with every movement, every thought.

There is a begging, a pleading in the back of his mind as Yukimura turns to him – Yukimura, Sanada Yukimura, even the name the same -

But the voice he longs to hear caressing him in words and sounds of passion is only questioning, taking on the tones of an interrogator, asking for a name.

Masamune feels something break inside him with this _proof_, this pure moment of pain – but he answers flippantly, throwing out the anguish like a weapon. He says it himself – _Dokuganryu_ – the thing he has been longing to hear.

And though there is not the response he has been waiting for he sees _something_ – a flicker, a change, a moment of recognition. Yukimura says it – the word he has wanted, the name that means more on these lips than any others.

"_Dokuganryu._"

He says it, and runs his tongue over his lips.

Suddenly the only thing Masamune can feel is the burning of hope in his belly, the dull empty weight of it – but the man he has dreamed to life is silent beside him, and staring, and the strangeness in his eyes is a swirl of wonders and woe.

"_**Red**_. _**Red –**_ are you all right, _**Red**_?"

He is answered by angry frustration.

"Do not call me that – you are my prisoner! You are to be silent, you are to obey – you are to speak only to answer my questions, and only with the information I request!"

Masamune's eye opens wide in surprise, and then narrows with mirth. Laughing hurts his shoulder, but he can't help himself; this moment is unlike any other in his memory, but it reminds him of the past just the same.

"I can't help myself, _**Red**_. You're just the way I remembered."

There is so much wrong with that moment – Masamune's laughter, the way his voice velvets that word, _**Red**_, the way Yukimura's body leans toward the sound without thought. The way this stranger speaks of memory, again and again, dragging at the lost volumes of the past, at their edges, still lingering in his mind.

Discomfited, angry, Yukimura turns abruptly and leaves, slamming the door behind him.

The sound slaps reality in the face; stinging and sudden, it returns to Masamune. He stares at the room around him, grey and dull now that Yukimura has gone, taking the passion and the fire away with his presence.

He is an American soldier, wounded and in enemy hands.

He is Date Masamune without Sanada Yukimura -

He is _Dokuganryu_ without _**Red**_; a dragon without his fire.

And it _hurts -_

* * *

><p>AN: And so the torment begins..and continues...and comes to a climax in the next chapter. :D

Please Review!


	21. Chapter 20

**Soul**

Chapter Twenty

_The Long Night: And So It Ends_

What follows is five months of torment and strangeness, five months of healing and hell.

It is five months of Yukimura forgetting every night and remembering every morning that the prisoner he tends and questions is nothing like a prisoner should be – that despite his own reputation for gentleness and care in handling the defeated, something more, something that should not be allowed, is growing between himself and Date Masamune.

He has never, since the first day, allowed himself to speak or think of his prisoner as anything but _Date Masamune_. He cannot think of him as a man, or as a soldier – and especially, he cannot think of him as _Dokuganryu._ That way lies madness. That way lies the strange sensation that he thinks is his soul, surging – a feeling like a beast leaping within him, rearing in joyful greeting and cringing in fear all at once.

But Masamune has no compunction about calling him _**Red**_, though the name has never made sense to Yukimura. Masamune seems driven by some compulsion, some _need_, that Yukimura cannot fathom. He talks endlessly of the past – the distant past, the recent past, yesterday. He ignores the future and the present, for the future will separate them into uncertainty and the present is a problem, an imbalance that cannot be corrected without loss. He wants to bring back that light of confusion to Yukimura's eyes, wants to prod and corrode and pry and find _the one who knows_.

Every day he tries, and every day he fails, and every day he whittles away at his pride a little more - but he is unbowed and unbroken. He is confident still, because he must be; because giving up is the end of all options and the end of all hope.

He does not know of the lessons Yukimura has learned in this life; there has not been enough time, enough conversation, and there is no equality between them for asking questions. The thing that stands out the most to him is the strongest of these lessons, for though Yukimura remains a warrior, and though there is is the steel of one who has taken lives in his eyes, there is also a softness – a gentleness.

Masamune knows this because every night there are screams without fail, and none of them are his. There is no torture, only questions, and perhaps it is because Masamune knows no secrets, can speak freely without lies - but he hopes it isn't. He hopes it is because somewhere in the silence of Yukimura's memory there is a voice crying out his name.

But the truth is Nanking. The truth is Yukimura's knowledge of the darker half of man's nature – the truth is that he has seen too many travesties and too much pain to willingly inflict torment on another. In battle, in the flash of his hot blood, he can _kill_ – but he cannot take a helpless man and flay him with agony.

He does not want to remember that what happened _then_ is happening now, any more than he _can_ remember all the lives that came before.

More than this, though, he does not want to confront the tension in his belly, the heat that is Masamune's laughter. He does not want to confront the feeling that does not belong, the desire that has grown up alongside it, does not want to to admit that it has been five months of confinement and not five days because he cannot bear to let his prisoner go.

There is no memory in it that he is aware of, but the pull between them is part of the past, a continuation of all that has been before even when Yukimura doesn't know this. Even if he did, it would change nothing. He has a job to do; he cannot define his life with desire and sensation.

Not even when the dreams are vivid, splendid darkness. Not even when he comes to know sigh and sound and skin without ever touching; not even as his questions grow less and less important.

The end, when it comes, is sudden – even for Yukimura. The order comes from the highest command; no more prisoners. No more time or resources wasted on demands for information that is more and more inaccurate as the days go by.

That night, for the first time, there is silence, and it is more penetrating than the screams. Without the noises of the interrogators or their helpers, the facility is blanketed in white quiet. There are moans, but most of the prisoners are in no condition to do anything but whimper with relief that the darkness has come without pain.

He wonders how many of them know it is soon to become an _eternal_ darkness.

He wonders how many of them will be grateful.

His feet lead him down the empty corridors to Date Masamune, and he peers through the slot in the door and sees the other man lying on his cot, an arm thrown over his eyes. With practiced movements, Yukimura slides back the bolt, lifts the lock, opens the door. There is a tremendous creaking as the heavy door opens, a familiar sound now, and Masamune pushes himself up on his elbows, pastes a grin on his face.

"Hello, _**Red**_."

Yukimura feels the familiar shiver, and then does something he hasn't since the beginning of this..._this_.

"Date Masamune..._Dokuganryu_."

The eye facing him, dark in the shadow Yukimura's body casts in the hallway light, goes wide. Yukimura hears Masamune's breath growing faster, feels his own heartbeat pounding dark in his chest. Something changes in the atmosphere as he steps into the room and closes the door behind him; something grows sharper, firmer, heavier. Perhaps it is his own decision; perhaps it is that flash of not-quite-memory which always touches him when he says that word.

He steps forward, slowly, and before he knows what he is doing his hands are unbuttoning his jacket, undoing the careful, pressed corners of fabric. He hears his voice speaking as if it is not his own, but it is, and he wonders if he has been planning this all along, even when he thought he had no plan.

"_Dokuganryu_, this is your last night on earth. Mine too, I think. Word has come from High Command; there are to be no more questions, no more answers – no more prisoners. In the morning, the execution squads will arrive, and you will be brought with the others to the courtyard, where you will die."

Masamune's eyes are on Yukimura's hands, on the buttons of his uniform shirt being undone one by one. He is not so distracted that he does not hear, but he can't think how to react; it is something he has expected, even while he hoped for anything else.

_Anything else_, standing in front of him, undressing.

Beneath the uniform shirt is a plain, cotton undershirt, and beneath that, smooth, dark, skin. Yukimura is golden, golden as the sun, his nipples dark as shadows on the sand; Masamune stares, and then leans forward without a word and pulls his own shirt over his head.

He is pale, too pale, and thin, too, his slenderness almost gaunt from five months of minimal food and exercise and no sun. Yukimura stares, pausing for a moment, reaching out to lay his fingers against Masamune's chest. Just above his fingers is a pale line of scar tissue; a spark leaps up his arm as he traces it, bounces around in his brain. This contrast is so perfect, so familiar; his skin is darker, always darker -

And then it becomes a question, a needle of confusion in his mind.

_Always?_

He says it, tastes it, sees Masamune's eye go wide and brighten with a storm of feelings.

"Always..."

He sits, under Masamune's shining stare, and begins to untie his boots – slowly, methodically. He pulls them off, and then his socks, tucking one in each boot. When he stands again, barefoot, Masamune stands with him and this time they do not reach for their own clothes, they reach for each other's.

Masamune's fingers tremble on the buckle of Yukimura's trousers; he feels heat lancing through him, Yukimura's fingers touching his hips.

And then they are naked, skin pressing against skin, fingers igniting fire, skimming nerves, tracing muscles, reaching for everything, anything.

The last words spoken were death, and as if they were a spell, Masamune and Yukimura move in a silence of gasps and groans. It is Yukimura who pushes Masamune back onto his cot, Yukimura who traces the scars on pale skin with his tongue, wraps his lips around the crinkled peak of a nipple. Yukimura, who drags a long, long moan from Masamune's throat, pressing his hips down, pressing the heat of his erection against Masamune's answering arousal.

The gasps he gains as he moves back and forth, hard satin against hard satin, drive him onward. He can feel Masamune struggling to be still, to _take_ this pleasure, to not throw him over and take control. Yukimura stares down at him, leans forward and takes his lip between his teeth, kisses him deeply. He feels muscles relaxing all through Masamune's body, and that one hardness, throbbing.

Words come then, but not many.

"_**Red**_ – _**Red**_, I've been _waiting_ -"

"You are mine, _Dokuganryu_. You have been mine since the beginning – you are always mine."

And then again, more gently.

"_Dokuganryu_."

He leans forward, and Masamune's mouth is hot on his skin, his tongue wet and rough as it passes over his chest, his nipples, pointed and dark, but Yukimura is on top, in control, and Masamune cannot find it in himself to care. He has been waiting for this his entire life; it is not what he expected, not the situation, not the position – but the man is the man he wants, and his kiss is a fire that burns away the rest of the world.

There is nothing in his memory to compare to these helpless moments of pleasure – the tongue that sweeps the length of his arousal, the fingers easing into his body, one and then two and then three. Masamune becomes an arch of back and thighs, panting with want, his hands reaching out for any kind of contact and then pinned, over his head, by a stronger hand. He is a larger man than Yukimura, taller, broader – but he has been imprisoned for five months and it shows.

He struggles, not to get free, but for the sake of the struggle. Yukimura's mouth is hot against his throat, lips and tongue and teeth, and then -

Yes, and then.

The penetration is fire, stretching on the edge of pain, and Yukimura's face is drawn tight with pleasure and concentration. He is trying to be careful, to be gentle, trying to wait for Masamune's pleasure, but Masamune bucks his hips forward, demanding more, setting a rhythm of roughness.

The world dissolves into gasps and heat and feeling.

It does not last forever, doesn't last nearly long enough – but that is all right. Crammed into the too-small space of Masamune's cot, they press their sweat-slicked bodies together and murmur of love, and the past – the past that Yukimura feels, now; the past that Masamune cannot forget.

But not the future.

Dozing, wrapped in a warm embrace, Yukimura listens to Masamune tell a story – _their _story, he says, and Yukimura is lulled to believing by the tingle that wakes inside him. Blips of familiarity rush at Yukimura now – names, places, events. He sees faces and wars flash across his mind as Masamune speaks.

" _- and then Nobunaga – and after that, there was the battle in Saiga – I don't know what happened to you, but I – the second battle was the one that killed me, and I saw you walking away – was there something...no, I remember – but when you found me in China, I couldn't believe it was you, and everything that happened then was my fault..._"

Masamune's words trail into silence.

Dawn breaks, and the light is a searing pain to Yukimura's eyes. Slowly, he untangles himself from Masamune and stands, crosses the room to his discarded clothes. He lifts his belt from the ground, and his hand lingers on his gun...and then moves, slowly, to the long knife sheathed beside it. His footsteps are silent as he pads back across the room; he stands naked in the single beam of sunlight, his skin glowing, his eyes flecked with scarlet fire.

Masamune is laying with his eyes closed, his body curled around the empty space that still bears the imprint of Yukimura's shape. His face is content, those loving lips curled in faint, fresh smile. Yukimura stands still, and then kneels at the edge of the cot, holding the knife tight in his hand. He positions it carefully, so that the blade will slide between Masamune's ribs, so that death will be quick and calm and mostly painless.

He stares, breaking, at the meeting of skin and steel, and though he knows that death is coming on swift wings, beating ever faster toward every prisoner in this place – though he knows that what he is offering his lover now is a painless end to deny his enemy -

His hands are frozen, still. He contemplates escape in dramatic and fantastic plans that crumble to ash in his mind.

A tremor moves through his whole body, and then -

A hand is on his hand, and one eye, blue in the shadows, is smiling at him with love.

The knife slips in, and out.

There is blood – _blood_.

Masamune's voice drains out of him with his life, one long sigh into silence.

"I'll be waiting, _**Red**_."

The room is suddenly empty, suddenly cold. The single line of sunlight is white and harsh now, but Yukimura leans back and smiles, _smiles_, and lets out a single sob of pain and self-reproach. He knows _exactly_ what Masamune means.

The knife slips, in, and out.

There is blood – _blood_.

There is a lingering scent of love; ozone and ashes.

* * *

><p>AN: Well, now...finally! This is the longest chapter by far – at least so far – at 2400 words. And we have one more arc left to finish out this fic, one more lifetime, one more trial, one more chance...shall we see where it leads us? First we will visit a pair of wanderers in the outer darkness; then, forward one more time...

Please Review!


	22. Chapter 21

**Soul**

Chapter Twenty-One

_Wanderers In The Outer Darkness: IV_

_The memory does not leave Masamune in death – how could it, when it lingered so completely in his life? It is a memory of many pains, a memory of memories, but he does not think he will have long to wait. His being is **awake** with waiting, pressed against the edges of time and space._

_He knows he deserved what life bestowed on him – he knows now that he **was **__punished, punished for his lack of trust, punished for the pain he caused the other half of his soul with selfishness and pride._

_Masamune does not care for pride, now. Masamune is ready to sacrifice all that he is just to have back the one he has waited for, all this time. He wants nothing, if he cannot have everything; oblivion, if not bliss._

_When Yukimura arrives, the violence Masamune expects is missing; there is shattering in Yukimura, there is a wound that is full of pain. He is a presence of apologies, reaching out and retreating, for just as Masamune knows the cause of their last lifetime's trauma, so does Yukimura. _

_He can see the echo now, the knife in his hand, this time. _

_He can see the betrayal he made of his own heart – forgetting out of fear, wasting days, months – wasting the future. _

_He cannot bear to be without the embrace he craves, now._

_Neither can he bear to be forgiven._

_But there is no distance here, not between bodies, not between hearts. There can be no distance, where everything is soul. The void is darkness, and then it is all Masamune, one embrace without direction, one desire without separation. _

_It is a Moment of comfort. _

_It brings Yukimura back together, brings them close and apart. They hover timeless and together, and they are two, and they are One._

"_You are better now, **Red**."_

"_You shouldn't forgive me -"_

"_Because you were an ass? At least you didn't do it on purpose – not like I did. And I was too greedy not to want you to forgive and forget – paid the price for that one, didn't I?"_

_The tingle of humor is a lazuli sparkle over Yukimura's skin._

"_It was – one last time, you said. I ruined our life!"_

"_The world does that – the world of war. Not you – never you."_

_His kiss is an entire storm, not just the lightning, and Yukimura's eyes are warm again, the pulse of his flame, his love, bright and growing. _

"_Come on, Dokuganryu. Let's go – let's try again. I know what to do now, I know just what to do."_

_Curious, Masamune meets that brilliant gaze and finds himself unable to deny it. It holds a challenge – it holds a promise. It holds a knowing that makes him hope that maybe this time, this time they will be able to find what they have been searching for since the very beginning. _

"_**Okay**,** Red**. One more shot, just for you."_

_And then time, beginning again. _

_Blackest night becoming the wide, new world._

* * *

><p>AN: No epic length this time...but enough, I think. Forward to the future, now, and a world more familiar to us all...

Please Review!


	23. Chapter 22

**Soul**

Chapter Twenty-Two

_And Until The End: Time_

The year is 1989, and Japan is a changed nation, a nation her ancestors might find unrecognizable. It is a nation that was destroyed by war and atomic weaponry, a nation that has been rebuilt with pride, a nation with its eyes fixed, now, firmly on the future.

It is still a home to great men, for war is not the only requirement of greatness, not even the best. Tokyo is built tall and shining, steel and glass in daylight, neon in darkness. It is another sleepless city, another tower of human accomplishment; its paved streets are lively with trade and traffic and human beings going about their lives.

At the edge of the cities, mountains and forests wait to refresh the worn down spirits of the people. Not all the ancient pools and palaces remain, not all the ancient waterfalls, ancient shrines, ancient temples...

But many do, and in the Autumn and for the festivals that have been celebrated since the islands were first colonized, the people stream out of the cities in long rivers of bright color and traditional garments, following the floating lanterns and the whorls of incense smoke.

One such shrine, decorated and glowing for the O-bon visitors, is home to Sanada Yukimura.

The office blocks and streets of Tokyo are home to Date Masamune...

But neither of them is yet full grown.

It is 1989, and the world has been waiting for them.

It is 1989, and the world is changed, and everything, _everything_ is different - except the one thing that matters.

* * *

><p>AN: So...this time...this time...everything is different. Let us see if that is enough, shall we? Onward once again, I'm on a roll :P

Please Review!


	24. Chapter 23

**Soul**

Chapter Twenty-Three

_And Until The End: Choice_

Sanada Yukimura is six years old, and he follows at his grandmother's heels as she bows and greets guests, moving among stands and stalls. The lanterns hanging over his head are like sparkling stars brought almost close enough for him to touch; he is treated with_ dango_, and so bright and adorable is his smile upon receiving it that the seller gifts him with a second, despite his grandmother's protests.

There are many people, however, families and classmates and lovers and friends all milling about, and the food stands are the busiest part of the temple grounds. In a moment, Yukimura's face changes from bright smile to the edge of tears. This is his home, yes – but where is grandmother?

Suddenly all he can see around him are strangers, tall faces looming over him with terrible expressions.

"Hey, you – little boy! What are you crying for?"

The voice is a stranger's voice, and Yukimura is resentful of being called a little boy, so he does not answer. He is six, after all – six and a half! - and he is a _big_ boy, not a little one.

"Hey – hey, _**Red**_, what's the crying for, huh? Festival's aren't for crying – and you've got _dango_!"

The voice is still strange, but Yukimura is suddenly not quite as unhappy. After all, this voice is talking sense – it's a festival, and he's not _really _lost. And, regardless, he _does_ have dango. There is also a question that must be asked, because he can't possibly let an insult go, and this stranger has called him something he doesn't understand.

But when Yukimura looks up, he is immediately enthralled.

The stranger is a young boy, older than him but not by much. He is dressed in blue, patterned with the waves of the ocean; he is dark-haired and the eye that Yukimura can see is the color of blue slate paving stones when it rains.

The other eye has bandages over it, and Yukimura stares at them in awe.

"Who are...who are _you_?"

The stranger-boy stands tall, and points at his chest.

"I'm Date Masamune – I'm eight. My eye got poked out when I was in a car accident with my dad; Mom says I'm just like _Dokuganryu_, now. Who are you, _**Red**_?"

Yukimura stares at him, tears forgotten.

"What's that mean?"

"What, _**Red**_?"

"Yeah..."

"It means red – you know, like the color? 'Cause of your haori, and...I don't know. You just look like a _**Red**_."

Masamune grins, and then winces, and then grins again, less widely.

Yukimura scoots over, and Masamune takes the invitation and sits beside him, bumping elbows.

Eying the bandage, Yukimura can't help but ask.

"Does it hurt?"

Masamune puffs himself up, putting on a brave face.

"Nah."

And then, deflating under Yukimura's unbelieving stare, he shrugs a little.

"Well, not now – not much, anyway. When it happened, though -"

And he shudders, and looks faintly ill, and closes his other eye.

Yukimura is unhappy that his new friend is unhappy, and can only think of one thing to do.

Carefully, he leans across and plants a wisp of a kiss on Masamune's bandages.

Masamune's eye opens wide, and for no reason he can explain he blushes a furious red.

Yukimura smiles, and holds out the stick clutched in his left hand.

"You want a _dango_?"

From the one he holds in his right hand, he takes a bite, and smiles.

Date Masamune will not know it for ten years, but he is in love.

Sanada Yukimura will not know it for longer than that – but he is, too.

* * *

><p>AN: And shall we go onward once more, my friends?

Please Review!


	25. Chapter 24

**Soul**

Chapter Twenty-Four

_And Until The End: Recognize_

It is ten years before Sanada Yukimura and Date Masamune meet again, but neither of them has forgotten the either, and both of them are suffering from the same pain.

They dream; they dream in color, they dream in waiting and flesh and lust and a feeling that both of them know must be love.

They dream in fire and lightning; they dream a typhoon of pleasures. They dream, and they desire, but neither of them knows _what_, knows _who_. Their meeting is a thing of memory, a faded moment that still somehow remains, out of all of childhood's vanished lusciousness.

For Masamune, life has been private schools and vacations with his mother in foreign lands. He rides a motorcycle, forgets his helmet more often than not, and refuses to wear anything but jeans. He is known as a _bad boy_, plays nicely only with girls, and drifts from one day to the next with a searching look in the back of his eye that draws in men and women both.

They all want to be the one they know he is looking for; _he_ knows that none of them are it.

In the back of his mind, behind the dreams and the wanting, there is a tickle of memory that he cannot place; a face; a smile.

It puts pressure on him, distracts him, motivates him, irritates him – and finally, because he has become unbearable to live with, impossible to deal with, because he will not, cannot tell anyone his trouble, he goes on a journey. A pilgrimage, almost – if such a word wouldn't sound ridiculous in combination with _Dokuganryu_.

He goes to a shrine in the mountains, three days of riding, three nights of sleeping on the grass under the stars with sharper dreams than ever. He tastes sun-browned skin and burns, and burns...and wakes, and finally makes his way up the path that winds alongside the many stairs. The sound of his motorcycle is the only human noise in the wide stillness of the mountain forest.

At the top of the path, a young man is standing; Masamune can only see half his face and the head of long hair, bound at the nape of his neck – but he turns almost at once, because he has been hearing the bike for some time now and expecting this rare, out of season visitor.

Masamune is the first one to remember, the first one to recognize who it is he's looking at. He feels warmth blossoming inside him, spreading outward; he raises his hand to his lost eye, covered by a patch as it has been now for many years, and feels again that wisp of soothing kiss.

He smiles, and across from him it is Yukimura's turn to flush.

"Hello, _**Red**_. Long time no see; were you waiting for me?"

And Yukimura ducks his head and looks at this visitor out of the corner of one eye.

It is the patch that strikes his memory, for he can remember only a single one-eyed boy – the boy dressed in blue.

"You are..._Dokuganryu_. Yes. I remember you – but I'm sorry, I don't remember any reservations...I was waiting because I heard the motorcycle."

Masamune stands quiet for a moment, staring, committing this young man's face to memory for reasons he cannot yet acknowledge.

"That's...all right. Hey – you know, I never found out what your name is, _**Red**_."

"Yukimura. Sanada Yukimura."

And with that name, something breaks open inside Masamune; he is suddenly laughing, and the sound is open and clear as the summer sky.

* * *

><p>AN: And...another chapter, my goodness. Next, Yukimura: to remember and to understand.

Please Review!


	26. Chapter 25

**Soul**

Chapter Twenty-Five

_And Until The End: Meet_

Yukimura leads his unexpected visitor to the well and draws him a bucket of water. Masamune's eyes are on the muscled forearms revealed from beneath white sleeves as Yukimura draws on the rope, but he is quick enough to stutter his thanks and then bends and strips off his T-shirt. He watches the blush grow on Yukimura's face from the corner of his eye as he dunks the shirt in the bucket, wrings it out, and uses it to wipe the sweat from his face and body.

The water drips in long smooth trails down Masamune's body and Yukimura's eyes follow them, stopping and returning to his shoulders as the individual drops disappear beneath the waistband of Masamune's jeans.

Masamune returns to his bike, and pulls another shirt out of his travel bag – another T-shirt, blue, emblazoned with a logo that Yukimura doesn't recognize. On the way inside to the lodgings that are kept for travelers, Yukimura is silent, but he feels Masamune's eyes on him and that night his dreams are harder, stronger, sharper, persistent, pulsing.

He wakes twice in the night, and the second time he is tempted to get up and go see the shrine's guest, but he cannot think of a reason he would want that, can't think of what he would possibly say to explain his presence. When he finally falls asleep again he is restless still, and dreams of that childhood festival – dreams of the boy who has returned as something else – as _Dokuganryu_.

In the morning, he does his chores around the shrine, sweeping, dusting, placing new incense, cleaning and relighting the old lamps. He avoids the visitor and his grandparents both, wrestling with the strangeness inside him. He cannot define it, but neither can he avoid it; it is a feeling, but it is more than that – its is memory, but it is more than that, too.

At night, when Date Masamune comes to dinner, Yukimura stares at him from the other side of the fire, watches all his movements, so engrossed that he doesn't notice Masamune staring back with hungry eyes. Masamune is older; he has had women and even a man, once – he knows what the hunger is for, knows the flame that has been ignited in his belly can be sated only one way.

But the lust is secondary to his pleasure at having found the one he knows that he's been looking for; he can see innocence in Yukimura's features, desires that don't know their outlet, and though it pleases him, it also gentles him, and draws him back into himself.

He says nothing, knows that it isn't the right time.

The next morning, he leaves, calm inside, as the ocean after the storm.

Yukimura is standing at the top of the stairs as Masamune passes by. For a moment, Yukimura stares, and Masamune catches that moment and looks back, smiling. Without a word, he is suddenly close to Yukimura – too close.

Quickly, he leans in and presses his lips against Yukimura's cheek.

"I've owed you that."

And then he grins, and throws his leg over his motorcycle, and revs the engine.

"So long, _**Red**_. When you know it's time, come find me."

Then he is gone, a blur of sound speeding down the mountainside.

Flushed and hot, Yukimura stands still for a long, long time, wondering, and then walks back into the shrine.

That night he dreams again; of pale hands, and lips as soft as the midsummer rain, and one, blue staring eye.

In the morning, he remembers nothing, but it feels as though he has begun to wait.

* * *

><p>AN: I might actually finish this tonight...holy monkeys of doom and amazingness!

Please Review!


	27. Chapter 26

**Soul**

Chapter Twenty-Six

_And Until The End: Challenge_

Nine years pass – nine years of contemplation that lead Yukimura from innocence to a woman, to a second woman, to a kiss with an entirely different kind of lover – a man.

It is the kiss that affects him most deeply – the kiss, which is a shock of warmth, awakening a memory and fleshing it out with feelings he did not understand when they first touched him. He pushes away the man who is hovering over him, and stammers his apologies, and returns to his own room, his own bed.

The night is long and full of the chirping of cicadas. He thinks back, remembers the first time he met Masamune, the proud boy with straight-back and bandages. He blushes, remembering the naïve, comforting kiss - and then grows redder still, remembering the return he received, remembering their second meeting.

He wonders, some nights, what would have happened if he had turned his head _just so_, if he had met that warm pair of lips with his own. A few months pass, while he wonders what it is he is supposed to do now, while he dreams the dreams he has always dreamed, and dreams new dreams of lust. There is only one figure in them, only one pair of hands caressing his body, one pair of lips, one mouth to worship with his kisses – one hard, strong body, waiting for his touch, his love, one eye, watching him...and this time he does not forget.

A month of this passes, and then two – and then he remembers the words that served as goodbye: the invitation, left by _Dokuganryu_.

"_So long,_ _**Red**_. When_ you know it's time, come find me._"

It has been ten years since last they came together when Yukimura says his goodbyes to his family and packs his bags. For the first time, he is leaving the shrine alone, going out into the world, down into Tokyo.

He has been given the task by his grandmother of bringing paperwork to the accountants that oversee the donations and funding for the shrine; he has given himself the task of finding his _Dokuganryu_, of finding Date Masamune and answering his kiss.

But it has been years since he was in the city, and he has never been there alone with a purpose like this. He makes his way easily through the crowded streets, watching businessmen in black suits mingle around him with students in uniforms and young adults in casual dress. He sees young women exposing more skin than he'd seen on his first lover, and men with brightly colored hair and painted nails. A few were dressed like him, in more traditional clothes, and he was grateful that he wouldn't stand out _too_ much.

He failed to recognize that the others dressed as he was were all far older; he made a striking figure with his long hair and his red-patterned white, with his _geta_ and his _tabi_ and his youth.

He made the accountant his first stop, as soon as he arrived, and then made his way through the city streets with one eye on his map and the other on the varieties of people wandering by, searching for that one, familiar face. The sound of a motorcycle makes him jump and turn, but it is not Masamune.

It is a stranger, like all the others – and in that moment Yukimura realizes that the city is enormous, millions of people, thousands of apartment buildings and homes.

_How will I find you, Dokuganryu? How do I even begin to look?_

When he finds his hotel, he is surprised by its opulence; his room is small, but it has a television and its own bathroom, and the bed is big and comfortable.

He stares at the bed, sees Masamune in his thoughts, the pale skin dripping with cold water. He sits on the edge of it, and rubs one hand across the comforter, and then lets out a sigh and looks in the drawer of the end table on which a phone is sitting.

Inside is the Tokyo Phone Directory, stamped with the hotel's emblem and with instructions for using the phone.

Swiftly, eagerly, Yukimura opens it and begins to look through the first section.

That night before he goes to bed, he calls twenty different homes, in which twenty different Masamunes reside, none of them his. By the following evening, he has come to the conclusion that Date Masamune's residence is either an unlisted number, or no longer in Tokyo.

The third day, half-hopeless and wondering what he can possibly try next, he walks the streets of Tokyo with his map in his sleeve, listless and confused. He passes by shops, restaurants, apartment buildings, and people; he no longer looks up at the sound of every passing motorcycle.

He crosses a busy street, looking ahead so that he won't bump into anyone – and then he stops, confronted by a vivid image – his own face, _himself_, hanging painted in brilliant reds and oranges. He is a samurai with spears; his eyes are alight with a flame of bloodlust and the smile on his face is directed not outward, at the viewer, but to the side, where nothing is visible but the edge of the frame – as if he is staring at someone who almost made it into the image.

Yukimura looks at himself, and feels a stir of memory, a stir of dreams. And then he walks into the gallery whose window the painting is hanging in, and demands contact information for the painter.

He thinks that the dainty woman working there gives him the address because the painting is of him; he is only partly right.

She gives it to him because his eyes are full of that same fire, though he does not know it; because he looks dangerous, and beautiful, and because she has worked here for eight years, selling the paintings of many prodigies - but Date Masamune's more than any others.

She has been selling _that face_ for eight years, and now that she has seen Yukimura in person, she knows why, and wonders if she will be selling paintings of a pair in the future.

Yukimura hears her voice drift out to him as he is passing through the door back to the street.

"I wish you luck, Sanada-sama."

Yukimura makes his way down the street with new hope, clutching the paper as if it is his whole life.

That night, for the first time, he dreams something complete, something real; something he remembers when he wakes.

It is Masamune, dressed in armor, blue and black. It is Masamune, and battle, Masamune, and his own samurai lifetime; it is Masamune, and the love they were denied by death.

He is wider awake than he has ever been in his life when the dream he leaves him; it is only three in the morning. He thinks on the dream in which he is the face he saw in the painting; he thinks that he remembers neither the first nor the last time this has happened - rather, it is somewhere in between. Suddenly, he cannot be still; his legs, his heart, are restless.

He should pack, but he can't stand to think of waiting; he should call first, but the thought of saying in words what must be said, the thought of hearing Masamune's voice without being able to look him in the eye – too much, it is too much.

It is four thirty in the morning and raining, and Yukimura has taken the wrong bus twice in his attempt to find Masamune's house. At the end of a long drive is a larger house than those he's seen; the number on the door is the same as the number on his piece of paper, and he knows the street is right.

He stands for five minutes by the door, mustering all his courage to knock, wondering what another ten years has changed -

But the door opens before he can knock, and Yukimura knows nothing has changed, nothing, because Masamune's face is shocked and beautiful and relieved.

The words that Yukimura has been planning to say are suddenly worthless as the wind; Masamune takes his arms and pulls him close, crushes his lips with a heavy, hungry kiss.

Yukimura lets out a sigh that might be a moan, and lets his eyes drift shut.

The rain falls warm and stinging on their skin.

* * *

><p>AN: One more chapter left, and then an epilogue between, I expect. Just a bit more...just a bit.

Please Review!


	28. Chapter 27

**Soul**

Chapter Twenty-Seven

_And Until The End: And So It Begins_

Long minutes pass; Yukimura tastes coffee and sweet almond liqueur on Masamune's lips, flavors he will associate with this man, this moment, forever. His mind catalogs a thousand sensations beyond description – the hands that are wrapped around his waist, ten fingers pressed unyieldingly, comfortably tight; the body pressed against him, hard and leanly muscled, lines and curves revealed by Masamune's clinging shirt and the warm trickle of rain.

The mouth, the mouth pressed against his mouth, tongue wrapped across his tongue, teeth nipping his lips – wandering along his jaw, sucking warmth to the surface at his throat, breathing hot, shuddering breaths into his ears.

Yukimura hears his own gasps and moans, staggers in confusion and finds himself pressed that much tighter against Masamune. His haori parts easily, and then that wicked mouth is on his chest, tracing the wet lines of racing raindrops, searching out the dark peaks of his nipples, warming the hollow of his throat, the curve of his collarbone.

Overhead, the streetlight flickers, and the moment of dimness is a subtle shock; Masamune grins, a wide, hungry expression, and pulls Yukimura into the house behind him, tugging on his sleeve.

"Inside, _**Red**_, before we get in trouble."

Yukimura's eyes widen slightly, his flushed cheeks darkening further, and he is a picture of wanton innocence in his hanging, parted clothes. There is a mark on his chest, dark warmth sucked to the surface by Masamune's mouth, and he presses his hand to it and feels his heart beating wild beneath his fingertips.

"In – trouble..."

"Yes."

"But why would -"

"Because you are mine now, _**Red**_, and I've waited long enough – too long. Except that once I had made the challenge, once I had give the choice to you...but it doesn't matter, now. I'm going to make you _scream_, _**Red**_."

Masamune's fingers are calm and collected as he speaks, undoing the ties that hold Yukimura's haori to his body, pushing the fabric down his shoulders, stopping to trace the lines of muscle in Yukimura's arms – bicep, tricep, the sensitive indent of his elbow. Damp silk slips from Yukimura's arms without protest; he is licking his lips, wishing that Masamune would hurry up, _hurry up_ – they've waited long enough.

_So long -_

The thought echoes in the corridors of memory, and its impetus is great enough to push Yukimura forward, to give him the boldness he has lacked until this moment. While Masamune's fingers are unwrapping his hakama, Yukimura reaches forward and drags his fingertips down Masamune's chest, feels heat and strength there, and then slides his hands beneath the clinging T-shirt fabric. Wet, warm skin greets his fingers, and hard pebbles of nipples; Yukimura lets his fingers skitter across them and then closes his eyes, savoring the moan that escapes Masamune's lips.

He has wanted this touch, this moment, this new world of rain-slick skin, for ten years. In this moment it doesn't matter that he didn't know what he wanted for most of those years; it doesn't matter that need and desire are not really the same thing.

Blind want leads him onward and he surprises Masamune with the force of his kiss, but only for an instant.

Then he knows he has woken the dragon; he feels the shift in the hands that pull away his haori, that unwrap his fundoshi, that grasp his taut and throbbing erection and pull pleasure from his loins with smooth, slow strokes. In their stumbling, they have come up against a wall; Masamune holds Yukimura pinned there with the weight of his body, feeling Yukimura's fingers scrabble against his chest.

He grins, and his eye crinkles with mischief and desire; his hands do not stop. Up, and Yukimura breathes; down, and he holds his breath – again, and again, and again. A bead of clear liquid pearls at the tip of Yukimura's arousal, and Masamune takes it onto his thumb and rubs it over the smooth, hot head, down to the underside of the straining shaft.

Then, reluctantly, he lets go. Eyes closed, skin flushed, harder than he has ever been in his life, Yukimura is pure sex. Masamune touches with his eyes while he pulls his rumpled shirt over his head and undoes the button of his jeans, kicks them aside. He wastes no time pulling off his boxer-briefs, tosses them to the side and then is back on Yukimura, pushing him back, pressing as much skin as he can against his lover.

And that thought strikes him suddenly, deep and piercing, and he whispers the word, low and soft, so that it sends a shiver crawling across Yukimura's skin.

"Lover...my lover, _**Red**_."

But his hands are moving again, and Yukimura does not need encouragement to return the pleasure that Masamune's stroking gives him. He can feel Masamune's pulse beating in the heavy hardness, sliding back and forth across his palm -

And then some barrier is breached, some union is found, some moment in which their gasps are equal, in which they pant together, begging, grasping, moaning. Yukimura's head falls forward against Masamune's chest; light bursts behind his eyelids, and he hears his own voice calling out, strangled and broken.

"Masa – Masa – Masa -"

Masamune is quieter, but his pleasure is no less intense. His whisper, "_Yukimura_" - it is tender agony, sharp enough to send a new shudder over Yukimura's skin.

It is Masamune who recovers first, and lifts his forehead from Yukimura's shoulder. He pulls Yukimura away from the wall and wakes him from the haze of his climax with a kiss; with kisses, with touches, he lures him down the hall, across a dark, carpeted room to his bed.

They tumble together into the sheets, and Yukimura gasps at the sensation of cool silk against his skin, and then again at the renewed tugging of Masamune's hand around his erection. He is as hard as if nothing had happened between them, but he has no leisure to contemplate this. Masamune's tongue sweeps across the planes of his chest, across his nipples. Slender fingers caress the heavy sac drawn up close to his arousal, and then dip downwards.

"Masamune!"

The cry tears past his lips as Masamune slips a finger inside him; his hips thrust upwards into Masamune's hand. Masamune's tongue flickers out over his lips; his eyes are locked on Yukimura, the spreading flesh that moves down from his cheeks to his throat, spreads across his chest, dips into every hollow of his abdomen. A second finger joins the first, and for a moment Yukimura squirms in discomfort, but the pleasure is greater; the promise is greater.

Masamune has spent ten years pleasing himself in the absence of this one lover, the only one he truly wants; his body has cursed him for this, and his dreams have been torment, but now he has Yukimura in front of him and he is intent on drawing them both into an ecstatic web from which they will never escape.

He makes two fingers three then, and enjoys the O of pleasure that Yukimura's mouth is making, enjoys the unrestrained thrusting of Yukimura's hips into each stroke of his hand. His own arousal throbs against his thigh, begging for attention, and Masamune pulls his fingers away then, leaves Yukimura panting, groaning for more.

In a drawer by the beside table Masamune finds what he needs, now, and lets out a hiss of pleasant shock as he coats his erection with the cool lubricant. He leans forward, presses against Yukimura, and Yukimura spreads his legs wide, reaches out his arms for Masamune's hips.

"You are mine now, _**Red**_. Mine this time, mine this time forever."

There is a shock for Yukimura when Masamune enters him, but it is not painful; for Masamune, it is like being wrapped in a hot velvet glove. He keeps his thrusts slow, agonizingly slow – to give Yukimura time to adjust, to give _himself_ time to adjust, for Yukimura is virginally tight around him, the muscles inside him quivering and coaxing Masamune's nerves.

"Ah..._Yukimura_ -"

The clenching of the muscles in Yukimura's thighs, his reaching fingers and flickering tongue all finally move Masamune, until his slow thrusts are quickening, roughening with every begging cry that makes its way past Yukimura's lips. Yukimura has never imagined this kind of sensation, pleasure sparking in wild starburst-patterns inside his body, shooting from the head of Masamune's cock inside him to the hard length of his own erection, pressed tight between their bodies, massaged by the heat of Masamune's body pressed down against him.

Yukimura's wandering hands float across Masamune's nipples, pinch them lightly, pull them with shaking fingers. Suddenly Masamune is pounding into him, nipping at the back of his calf, blue bright in his eye. Every thrust is unimaginable pleasure; Yukimura wraps his legs around Masamune's hips and closes his eyes tightly, holds on to the sheets, to Masamune – Masamune – Masamune -

The thought, the truth, is too much. His body shudders, spasms, arcs, and his climax rips through him like a bolt of white fire. Vaguely, from a sated, delirious distance, he hears his voice rising, a loud, groaning cry.

Mixed with it is the shuddering and the moaning of Masamune; he thinks it is a perfect sound.

In the morning, Yukimura is the first to wake, and when he is showered and dressed in the clothes Masamune tossed aside, he takes the quiet moments of the morning to center himself, to seek out balance. He wanders the open spaces of Masamune's house, and as he does so, finds his feelings settling deeper, firming themselves.

He finds paintings of faces he knows – some of them are of him, and some are of his _Dokuganryu - _ in other places, other times. He sees endless battlefields; he walks down a long hallway of painted pasts and does not find a single image that is free of blood. As he walks, he hears the echoes of victorious men; he hears the sound of clashing armies, is assaulted by the odors of war – there is a tingling in his palms, and he knows what it feels like to grasp deadly weapons with killing intent.

Like fog retreating, something like memory returns to him; something like, because it is still different from the fleshly memory of this mortal life. He stares at a painting very much like the one that first caught his attention – his own face, full of fire – and he knows that Masamune, too, must share the strangeness that is now filling his thoughts.

He doesn't know how long it is that he has been waiting for this moment – a calm moment, a quiet moment, after the storm of their body's lusts, but he knows it was too long; the ache in his heartbeat, the ache of an old wound finally closing, tells him this.

He hears Masamune come up behind him.

"I couldn't forget you, _**Red**_. I couldn't forget anything about you. I spent ten years trying to empty my heart onto canvas – if I hadn't known you were real, I might have killed myself from the torment of you."

Yukimura is silent; he stares into the reflection of Masamune's eye, captured in the glass of the painting's frame.

"Never leave, _**Red**_."

It is a valiant, vulnerable moment for the man who was-once-and-is the One-Eyed Dragon.

It is a final death of pride.

It is love, and the only victory that matters.

"Date Masamune..._Dokuganryu_. Try and make me."

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><p>AN: Phew! A long chapter...and the longest smuts. Teehee. One chapter left, the inbetween – which, I know, is the start of each arc, but is also serving as a mini-epilogue kind of thing. Hey, I'm the author. I can do that. ::snickersnacks::

Please Review!


	29. Epilogue

**Soul**

Epilogue

_Wanderers In The Outer Darkness: Eternal_

Time..._passes_.

It is the blinking of an eye; it is a wind; it is a chime, a single note made sweet and solid.

It is seventy years of two human lives entwined, one soul separated and twice enfleshed.

It is eternity, the depths and shallows of time and space; it is one moment, extended beyond the limits of the World.

Embracing now, two-that-are-one, Date Masamune and Sanada Yukimura ripple across the cosmos.

"_Was it everything you wanted, **Red**?"_

"_No - more. Those were the days I wanted, Dokuganryu."_

_There is no possibility of more closeness between them, or they would come together in a tighter embrace. If there is something in this universe that can pull them apart now, they have not encountered it; if they do, they will fight it – together. _

_This is eternity; this is the true forever. This is life beyond light, dark beyond death, the proof that there is more than silence in the waiting shadows. _

_This is divine union, far more than the sum of all earthly pleasures; this is knowing that for the first time they are one with no fear of division. _

_This is the culmination of a thousand generations of pain._

_This is every one of them, worth it; this is every moment cherished for its end result. _

"_What now, **Red**?"_

"_Everything. Everything, forever. With you."_

"_**With you**."_

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><p>AN: And...Fin. That's all, folks, there isn't any more. Thanks to all who have read, and all who have reviewed, especially Naq, my inestimable braintwin without whom this wouldn't have been begun in the first place (or finished until next year), and Nami-la-folle, who is currently beginning a French translation of this tale, also posted on Fanfiction net, on her own user name. I would include the link, but FF doesn't like them...so if French is your preferred or native language, check it out!

Please Review!


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